In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes a game of chess with his wife and mentions the writer's grief:
"What is that funny creaking - do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?"
"It is old winter tumbling in the mud."
"And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned."
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child. (ll. 653-664)
In his note to Line 662 (Who rides so late in the night and the wind) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
This line, and indeed the whole passage (line 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler. One cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse:
662 Who rídes so láte in the níght and the wind
664 .... Ít is the fáther with his child
Goethe's two lines opening the poem come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent - enfant), in my own language:
Ret wóren ok spoz on nátt ut vétt?
Éto est vótchez ut míd ik détt.
Another fabulous ruler, the last king of Zembla, kept repeating these haunting lines to himself both in Zemblan and German, as a chance accompaniment of drumming fatigue and anxiety, while he climbed through the bracken belt of the dark mountains he had to traverse in his bid for freedom.
Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) brings to mind treffliche Sibylle (“excellent Sibyl”), as in Goethe’s Faust (1808) Mephistopheles calls the Witch who makes a potion for Faust:
Mephistopheles:
Genug, genug, o treffliche Sibylle!
Gib deinen Trank herbei, und fülle
Die Schale rasch bis an den Rand hinan;
Denn meinem Freund wird dieser Trunk nicht schaden:
Er ist ein Mann von vielen Graden,
Der manchen guten Schluck getan. (Hexenküche)
Mephistopheles:
O Sibyl excellent, enough of adjuration!
But hither bring us thy potation,
And quickly fill the beaker to the brim!
This drink will bring my friend no injuries:
He is a man of manifold degrees,
And many draughts are known to him. (VI, “Witches’ Kitchen”)
Ein Mann von vielen Graden (“a man of manifold degrees,” as Mephistopheles calls Faust) brings to mind Gradus, Shade’s murderer whom Kinbote mockingly calls “Vinogradus” and “Leningradus:”
Such things rankle - but what can Gradus do? The huddled fates engage in a great conspiracy against Gradus. One notes with pardonable glee that his likes are never granted the ultimate thrill of dispatching their victim themselves. Oh, surely, Gradus is active, capable, helpful, often indispensable. At the foot of the scaffold, on a raw and gray morning, it is Gradus who sweeps the night's powder snow off the narrow steps; but his long leathery face will not be the last one that the man who must mount those steps is to see in this world. It is Gradus who buys the cheap fiber valise that a luckier guy will plant, with a time bomb inside, under the bed of a former henchman. Nobody knows better than Gradus how to set a trap by means of a fake advertisement, but the rich old widow whom it hooks is courted and slain by another. When the fallen tyrant is tied, naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when young in a story about an Italian despot, which made of me a vegetarian for life), Gradus does not take part in the infernal sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the carving.
All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171)
St. Petersburg’s name in 1924-91 was Leningrad. In his novel Peterburg (1913) Andrey Bely quotes Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782) in the original and in Zhukovski’s Russian translation:
У старушки, у Ноккерт – у гувернантки – на дрожащих коленях, он видит, покоится его голова; старушка читает под лампой:
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind…
Вдруг, – за окнами кинулись буревые порывы; и бунтует там мгла, и бунтует там шум: совершается там, наверно, за младенцем погоня: на стене подрагивает гувернанткина тень.
И опять… - Аполлон Аполлонович – маленький, седенький, старенький – Коленьку обучает французскому контредансу; выступает он плавно и, отсчитывая шажки, выбивает ладонями такт: прогуливается – направо, налево; прогуливается – и вперед и назад; вместо музыки он отрезывает – скороговоркою, громко:
Кто скачет, кто мчится под хладною мглой:
Ездок запоздалый, с ним сын молодой…
И потом поднимает на Коленьку безволосые брови:
– «Какова же, гм-гм, мой голубчик, первая фигура кадрили?»
Все остальное было хладною мглой, потому что погоня настигла: сына вырвали у отца:
В руках его мертвый младенец лежал…
Вся протекшая жизнь оказалась игрою тумана после этого мига. Кусок детства закрылся. (Chapter Seven)
Jakob Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). Andrey Bely is the author of Odna iz obiteley tsarstva teney (“In the Kingdom of Shadows,” 1925), a book about Bely’s life in Germany in 1921-23. In Bely’s Peterburg Shishnarfne tells Dudkin (the terrorist) that biologiya teney (the biology of shadows) is not yet studied; that’s why one cannot come to an agreement with a shadow, one never knows what it wants:
Александр Иванович подумал, что поведение посетителя не должное вовсе, потому что звук голоса посетителя неприличнейшим образом отделился от посетителя; да и сам посетитель, неподвижно застывший на подоконнике – или глаза изменяли? – явно стал слоем копоти на луной освещенном стекле, между тем как голос его, становясь все звончее и принимая оттенок граммофонного выкрика, раздавался прямо над ухом.
– «Тень – даже не папуас; биология теней еще не изучена; потому-то вот – никогда не столковаться с тенью: ее требований не поймешь; в Петербурге она входит в вас бациллами всевозможных болезней, проглатываемых с самою водопроводной водой…» (Chapter Six)
Mad Dudkin’s fancy transforms Shishnarfne (a Persian whose visit is imagined by Dudkin) into Enfranshish (Shishnarfne in reverse and a play on shish, ‘nothing’). In Canto Two of his poem Shade speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words:
She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force
Of character - as when she spent three nights
Investigating certain sounds and lights
In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,
Murmuring dreadful words in monotone. (ll. 347-356)
According to Kinbote, it was he who observed one day that “spider” in reverse is “redips” and “T.S. Eliot,” “toilest:”
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing "mirror words," observed (and I recall the poet's expression of stupefaction) that "spider" in reverse is "redips," and "T.S. Eliot," "toilest." But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled me in certain respects. (note to Lines 347-348)
Mirror words and the Shadows bring to mind Zerkalo teney (“The Mirror of Shadows,” 1912), a collection of poetry by Valeriy Bryusov. Marina Tsvetaev’s essay on Bryusov is entitled Geroy truda (“The Hero of Toil,” 1925). In her essay Dva lesnykh tsarya ("Two Forest Kings," 1933) Marina Tsvetaev compares Lesnoy tsar' ("The Forest King," 1818), Zhukovski's Russian version of Goethe's poem, to the original. Marina Tsvetaev is the author of Plennyi dukh ("The Captive Spirit," 1934), a memoir essay on Andrey Bely.
In Bely’s Peterburg Dudkin kills Lippanchenko (the agent-provocateur) with the scissors:
Когда утром вошли, то Липпанченки уже не было, а была – лужа крови; был – труп; и была тут фигурка мужчины – с усмехнувшимся белым лицом, вне себя; у нее были усики; они вздернулись кверху; очень странно: мужчина на мертвеца сел верхом; он сжимал в руке ножницы; руку эту простер он; по его лицу – через нос, по губам – уползало пятно таракана.
Видимо, он рехнулся. (Chapter Seven)
At the beginning of Canto Two Shade speaks of his married life and mentions the little scissors with which he pares his fingernails:
The little scissors I am holding are
A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.
I stand before the window and I pare
My fingernails and vaguely am aware
Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,
Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum
College astronomer Starover Blue;
The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;
The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;
And little pinky clinging to her skirt.
And I make mouths as I snip off the thin
Strips of what Aunt Maud used to call "scarf-skin." (ll. 183-194)
Maud is an anagram of Daum (Ger., thumb). "A dazzling synthesis of sun and star" brings to mind kometa (a comet) mentioned by Marina Tsvetaev in "Two Forest Kings:"
Остановимся сначала на непереводимых словах, следовательно - непередаваемых понятиях. Их целый ряд. Начнём с первого: хвост. Хвост, по-немецки, и Schwanz и Schweif; например - у собаки Schwanz и Schweif - у льва, у дьявола, у кометы - и у Лесного Царя. Поэтому моим "хвостатым" и "с хвостом" хвост у "Лесного Царя" принижен, унижен.
First of all, let's dwell on untranslatable words and therefore on notions that cannot be rendered in another language. They are quite a few and the first of them is khvost (tail). In German, khvost is both Schwanz and Schweif: a dog has a Schwanz, but a lion, a devil, a comet and the forest king have a Schweif.
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Svoemu dvoyniku ("To my Double," 1917) is a poem by Andrey Bely. In his New Year epistle To E. K. Metner (1909) Andrey Bely mentions poslednie akkordy kody (the last chords of a coda):
Твой брат С-мольную сонату
Наигрывает за стеной...
Последние аккорды коды
Прольются, оборвутся вдруг...
О, если б нам в былые годы
Перенестись, старинный друг!
As Gogol explains in his fragment Rim ("Rome," 1842), coda means in Italian "tail." Andrey Bely is the author of Masterstvo Gogolya ("Gogol's Artistry," 1934).